By Matthew Wood

If there’s one thing we’ve established through five seasons of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, it’s that Larry David is a jackass. A real jackass. In every sense of the word. But sometimes it’s just not his fault, and Sunday was a case in point.

First he deals with a woman who can’t make up her mind at the ice cream store, causing great delay (and, of course, a slew of sarcastic remarks) for poor LD. Then he has to deal with taking a stinky 50-dollar bill from the recently orphaned Marty Funkhouser. (Can a middle-aged man become an orphan? Funkhouser claims he can, after his mother just died. We’ll let it slide … I guess.)

So, you can’t blame Larry for shorting the painter (because he wouldn’t take the dirty fifty) or stealing flowers (twice) from Ida Funkhouser’s roadside memorial (because the flower shop wouldn’t take the fifty) or stealing perfume from the late Mama Funkhouser’s in-house memorial (OK, that one was probably his fault, but hey, he was just trying to get some lovin’ from Cheryl. And really, how many memorials can one woman have?).


The point is that Larry’s not always to blame. And that’s when this show really takes off. Too many times, it gets bogged down in just reveling in the assholery of his everyday antics. That gets old. But when he is wronged, and has a cause to right the wrongs (in his words, “I break it down … and I rectify”) that’s when things get rolling. Of course, he never actually rectifies things – in this case, he gets Jeff and Susie’s kid kicked out of school by trying to steal the flowers from the woman he gave after stealing from the … ahh, never mind.

But in the end, it all works out as Larry gets some lovin’ after giving Cheryl the stolen perfume. Which is the whole reason he tried to be nice in the first place. And, as he says, once he gets his sexin’ on, he can go back to being the jackass that he is. And that leads to the best exchange of the night, as the happy couple makes their way to the Funkhouser funeral:

LARRY: You smell nice
CHERYL: Thanks. Do you want to go to my sister’s after the service?
LARY: I don’t think so.

Ahh, yes. Spoken like a true jackass – who’s just gotten laid.